Poetry
In a Vial on the Windowsill You’ll Find It
by Marisca Pichette
This morning I wrote to the bees:
I’m bleeding my eyes for summer,
my skin your favorite texture:
Petals and pollen and futurehood
all yours, for you, today.
I’m sealing my wishes with beeswax
propped at the foot of milkweed
stalks weeping white—
our language unshared.
The garden I wander is silent,
all murmuring confined
in yellow-striped envelopes
vanished on the breeze.
An echo of buzzing draws me
into cloud-choked stars
I forget how to sing.
This morning I’m writing a message
in topsoil and winter air:
Be here tomorrow and the next day.
Be here next week and next year.
Be here, and I’ll bleed an infusion
Honey, marjoram, lemongrass
and sapphire skies above you
Long after we have left.
Featured Poet of the Month Marisca Pichette
Marisca Pichette is a queer author based in Massachusetts, on Pocumtuck and Abenaki land. Find her work in Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, Vastarien, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Fantasy Magazine, The Deadlands, Nightmare Magazine, and others. She is the flash winner of the 2022 F(r)iction Spring Literary Contest and has been nominated for the Bram Stoker, Pushcart, Best of the Net, Elgin, Utopia, Rhysling, and Dwarf Stars awards. Her debut collection, Rivers in Your Skin, Sirens in Your Hair, was a finalist for the Bram Stoker and Elgin Awards.